German potato salad

Boil 4 lb. large peeled white potatoes, cut in half, in large stock pot with salt until barely tender. Drain and rinse under cold water. Cut potatoes into slices. Set aside. In a skillet cook 1 lb bacon until crispy. Save 1/4 C. bacon grease for 'potato salad sauce', discard the remaining grease. Set aside bacon. In a 2qt sauce pan combine 1 1/2 C. water, 1 1/2 C. apple cider vinegar, 1 1/2 C. sugar, bacon grease, and 1/4 C. corn starch. Bring to a low boil, stir to dissolve everything. When thick remove from heat. Add sauce to potaotes, and gently fold in bacon, 1/4 C. diced green onions, and 6 hard boiled eggs, diced.

Swedish Meatballs

Meatballs	Gravy
1/2 lb Hamburger	1/2 stick butter
1/2 lb pork	1/3 C. flour
1 lb ground turkey	1 carton (4C) beef stock
3 slices fresh bread, processed in blender to make crumbs
1 onion, diced	3/4 C. sour cream
2 large eggs	1/2 bunch parsley
6 allspice mashed with mortar and pestal	more black pepper and nutmeg
fresh grated nutmeg and black pepper to taste
olive oil

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, and cook, stirring frequently, until onions have become translucent, about 2-3 minutes; set aside. In a large bowl, combine ground meat, bread crumbs, eggs, allspice, nutmeg and onion; season with salt and pepper, to taste. Using a wooden spoon or clean hands, stir until well combined. Roll the mixture into 1 1/4-to-1 1/2-inch meatballs, forming about 24 meatballs. Add remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil to the skillet. Add meatballs, in batches, and cook until all sides are browned, about 4-5 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.
To make the gravy, melt butter in the skillet. Whisk in flour until lightly browned, about 1 minute. Gradually whisk in beef broth and cook, whisking constantly, until slightly thickened, about 1-2 minutes. Stir in sour cream; season with salt and pepper, to taste. Stir in meatballs and cook, stirring occasionally, until heated through and thickened, about 8-10 minutes. Serve immediately, garnished with parsley, if desired.

original recipe here

Den. Capituliflorum

Dendrobium capituliflorum. Green/white flowers are usually produced from lower nodes on the second-year canes.

Orchid Mania

The Cleveland Botanical Garden was holding Orchid Mania February 1 thru March 9.  The Greater Cleveland Orchid Society was holding their annual spring show and selling plants Saturday and Sunday.  I got three new plants.  Click the picture above for an album of pictures I took at the Mania! Cross your fingers and hope my new orchids bloom soon :D

Songs you Misinterpreted

You loved this song when you first heard it, but that was until you understood the lyrics.

12. "Every Breath You Take" by Police
"Every move you make, Every vow you break, Every smile you fake, Every claim you stake, I'll be watching you."  Many people apparently take the song’s lyrics as a lover’s vow, but Sting says he had more sinister things in mind — for example, government's spying on their citizens. That makes the song very ugly.

11. "Stan" by Eminem
I liked this song because it uses Dido's song as a back drop. This is the story of an overly obsessed and unhinged fan who eventually drunkenly kills himself along with his pregnant wife. Despite being disturbing, Rolling Stone ranked it the 296th greatest song of all time and VH1 named it the 15th greatest hip-hop song of all time.

10. "Of Monsters and Men" by Little Talks
Upbeat jazzy song about a lady who is being lost to mental illness, and her lover being constantly supportive but unable to help

9. "No Rain" by Blind Melon
"And all I can do is read a book to stay awake, And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape." I guess I never notices the song was sad.

8. "Choose me for Champion" by Rasputina
"I have charisma and of course a winning smile. I stand accused of being an audacious redeemer, Not a charge I can deny. I have refused the way of the liar and the schemer. And I’m not afraid to die ."
Why is it on this list? Because most of the lyrics are from a speech by Osama Bin Laden, which makes it (decidedly) uncomfortable to use to get yourself revved up to go out and face the world.

7. "Romans 10:9" by The Mountain Goats
Really, there’s nothing in the lyrics here that the average listener would find that disturbing. But while people think it’s cheerful, it’s actually about somebody whose life is so terrible that all he has to cling to is religion, lest the despair kill him. "Won't take the medication but it's good to have around, A kind and loving God won't let my small ship run aground."

6. "Im Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star" by The Boy Least Likey To
The song tells a story of youthful loves and musical adventure, but is interspersed with lines like ‘I never would have got here if I followed my heart” and the even stranger “I’m happy if you’re happy, but it breaks my heart.” These lines drop out of nowhere, and ruin one’s ability to take the light-hearted story that accompanies at face value.

5. "We Are Young" by Fun
"Tonight, We are young, So let’s set the world on fire, We can burn brighter than the sun."
At worst, Fun's seemingly anthemic song about the power and potential of youth is set against a backdrop of an old abusive relationship. At best, it's about a broken relationship that didn't involve physical violence. Either way, the song hinges on a pretty powerful juxtaposition of past regret and future promise and, despite its singalong chorus, it's also kind of a bummer.

4. "I Don't Like Mondays" The Boomtown Rats
If you only listen to the chorus, "I Don't Like Mondays" probably sounds pretty unassuming and innocuous. But this isn't a song about a working for the weekend type who casually loathes the start of another week, it's actually about a 16-year-old girl who shot up a San Diego playground one morning in 1979, offering no explanation for her actions beyond "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."

3. "99 Red Balloons" Goldfinger
A bag's worth of helium balloons are casually released by an anonymous civilian into the sky and are registered as missiles by a faulty East German Early Warning System; mistaken for an attack by NATO, it results in panic and eventually nuclear war. 99 Red Balloons, the English version, adds a significant and poignant detail — that the song's narrator released the fateful balloons. "Ninety nine dreams I have had, In every one a red balloon, It's all over and I'm standing pretty. In this dust that was a city, If could find a souvenir, Just the prove the world was here, And here is a red balloon, I think of you and let it go."

2. "Brown Sugar" Rolling Stone
And to think I heard this being used for a splenda commercial! It's a song about raping slave girls.

1. “This Land Is Your Land,” Woody Guthrie
I remember singing this song in elementary school and thinking it sounded so pleasant and positive. It’s actually a critique of the idealistic version of the U.S. that Irving Berlin sang about in “God Bless America.” His displeasure is subtle, but made obvious upon careful examination of lines like “As I was walkin’, I saw a sign there and that sign said—No trespassin’. But on the other side, it didn’t say nothin’! Now that sign was made for you and me!” This song is often grouped with “God Bless America” as patriotic tunes, but Guthrie had the opposite intention. Sorry Mom.

New orchid

I had to rescue this frost bitten orchid from the grocery store today. It came in a lovely glazed pot, too. I lost two orchids this week due to root rot. The sphagnum moss was packed too tightly around their roots and could not properly dry out between watering. I didn't want to re-pot the orchids so soon after getting them, but it's always a gamble: Do it right and know they have a fighting chance, while delivering a massive shock to the root system, or Let them try to recover in their original environment while chancing root binding and rot with no shock to the system. This is why people don't get into orchids. They can be tricky sometimes.

Cinnamon coffee cake

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter (room temperature)
1 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 cup buttermilk (milk + 1Tb. vinegar left to rest for 5 minutes)
1 cup brown sugar
2 heaping tablespoons ground cinnamon

Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Cream the butter and sugar in another bowl. Beat in the eggs, salt, vanilla and lemon zest. Gradually incorporate the dry and wet ingredients, slowly adding the milk to keep batter consistency correct. Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Pour 1/3 of the batter into a greased 9x5 inch loaf pan. Pour 1/3 of the cinnamon mixture on top. Repeat two more times, pour the remaining cinnamon mixture on top. Bake in a preheated 350F oven until a toothpick pushed into the center comes out clean, about an hour.